Okay, sure, Julius Caesar certainly should beware the Ides of March, but does that mean the rest of us (and may I point out it’s been more than 2000 years since his assassination) also have to tiptoe through the 15th? What was just a day on the calendar has become a thing -- like seeing a pothole way ahead on the road, saying to yourself, I need to go around that pothole then hitting the pothole anyway. If you weren’t looking, you might have missed it, but because you fixated, it’s like fate gave you no choice but to bend your rim.

According to Greek historian and biographer Plutarch, a seer had warned Julius Caesar to “beware the Ides of March.” Caesar didn’t heed the warning (he even mocked it) and showed up to the senate meeting in 44 BC for his date with 60 conspirators who stabbed the ruler to death. The Roman calendar didn’t number their days; they focused on three fixed points: the Nones, Ides (middle) and Kalends. Caesar is assassinated, centuries later Shakespeare immortalizes the story in his play Julius Caesar, and BAM we’re freaked out a little every March 15th.

That’s the power of story. The allure of legend. A place garners a reputation for being haunted, for harboring monsters, or being a secret alien landing site, and it’s the only thing we can think about. That story is a human connection from one person to another. It’s a literal line that connects people to each other, then to places, then to points in time.

I view my job as following that string from person to person, from place to place, and then back in time to see where it leads me. And sometimes, when the conditions are just right… the past comes alive again. We see something that doesn’t belong in our present. Those are the moments I live for.

I know I’m not alone. Over the years I’ve encountered so many of you who also want to explore these events and things that bind us to each other. It’s why I love paranormal events. It’s the place where we explore what we have in common, not what makes us different.

Hmm...this is kind of a tough question! On the surface, I don't know, really. The Ides of March never meant anything more to me than it being my Paw Paw's birthday. I always viewed the thing with Caesar as a personal prophecy for him, lol...but I do admit that when I was little I used to love going around "warning" everyone of the "eyes of March." I think I was about 8 when someone finally corrected me, lol.

Friday the 13th is another day that people seem to treat with trepidation, but I don't ever remember much fear there...although I did make it a point to not walk under any ladders or break any mirrors on that day. Oh, and if anything DID happen, I had a convenient scapegoat to take the blame. As I got older, the history behind it interested me a great deal.

I guess a date that sticks out in my mind is September 11, which obviously, was the date of one of America's worst tragedies. Each year when the anniversary rolls around, I have a deep sadness come over me, but also a little anxiety when I think that somewhere, someone out there could take advantage of the date and launch another such attack. I know that is unlikely, but it's always nagging me, in the back of my head, especially when the 10th anniversary passed.

And another thing I have to admit, lol...when December 21 passed without incident, I heaved a sigh of relief, lol. I didn't consciously believe that anything would happen, but things in the "universe" just seemed tense. We had an election that made a lot of people unhappy, and were reeling from the Newtown tragedy. Here in WV we had even been having crazier than usual weather, lol.

Just recently though, I've had a return to that anxiety, but I don't have a date in mind. Before I sound too crazy, I'll explain a little of what has me taking note, lol.

1. The Papal Prophecy of St. Malachy. According to it, Pope Francis is supposed to be our last pope before the End Times. I had heard of this prophecy a couple of years ago, and thought that with our previous pope's advanced age and health status, that it was very likely that a new pope could coincide with the 2012 Mayan stuff. We were just a little off, lol.

2. The Montauk Experiment. I got the Roku box for Christmas and among the many channels available, I found several that have a great deal of paranormal documentaries. One I watched was a 1989 interview with 3 men who allegedly participated in these goverment experiments with time travel. When asked certain questions, the 3 men all agreed that they had been as far as the year 10,000, but that there were little or no living things in this year, and everything was like a lucid dream. When asked how far into the future they had gone where life was still normal, they all agreed that they didn't get past the year 2012, 2013, or 2014.

3. We've been discovering an awful lot of really close asteroids lately, lol.

As a side note, March 21st will be interesting...my mom keeps asking what's happening on March 21st and I have NO idea what she's talking about. She just keeps saying that she thinks something is happening on that date. She's so scatterbrained that it could be anything from a new show debuting, a hair appointment, or a premonition of natural disaster, lol.

Interests:spirituality, art, design, reading, photography, my family (of course), nature, biology, genetics... I could go on, but I think I will stop here.

Posted 15 March 2013 - 06:40 PM

I did heave a sigh of relief when we made it past Dec. 21, 2012, but I was not afraid of the date. As for TheresaRHP's number 2- they were most likely blocked from seeing past 2014. I got a peak at a "Future" life during a Brian Weiss seminer, that was 1,000 years in the future and yup, humans were still around. Seminer was in 2004 and we didn't check any further forward than that.
As for March 21, your Mom, Theresa, might be thinking about the first day of Spring. Though I think its on the 20th this year.

Its interesting that we've still got this discussion of "scary dates" going, because there's been a lot of talk about this lately, what with all the news here in the US. I've heard this theory before, and this past week really solidified it in my mind...but it seems like the week from about April 13th to April 20th (which is Hitler's birthday and some say plays a role) always is bad for terrible tragedies.

April 14, 1865: Lincoln Assassinated

April 15, 1912: Titanic sinks

April 15, 2013: Boston Marathon bombing and the events surrounding the capture of the second suspect

April 16, 1947: Another Texas fertilizer incident kills around 576 people

April 16, 2007: Virginia Tech shooting

April 18, 1906: San Francisco earthquake

April 18, 2013: West, Texas fertilizer plant explosion

April 19, 1993: Last day of the Waco stand-off which killed 76 men, women and children

April 19, 1995: A car bomb parked outside the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City kills 168 people and injures more than 500.

Chernobyl barely missed the cutoff, happening on April 26th, and the assassination of MLK Jr. was a little early, happening on the 4th. I am very aware that there are terrible tragedies that come at all times of the year, and probably statistically, there is nothing different about this week-long stretch. But, any Google search will show that there are a lot of people out there keeping these dates on the radar and giving some truth to T.S. Eliot's words: "April is the cruellest month."